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Notes Field Notes For Mrs. Cruise, Perhaps a Cat The New York Times nytimes.com Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company November 12, 2006 By NADINE BROZAN IF Tom Cruise, a devotee of the Church of Scientology, weds Katie Holmes in Italy on Saturday, as his spokesman has announced, the event may well be a Scientology ceremony. If so, the bridegroom might hear the Scientology minister proffer this advice, part of what the church refers to as the traditional ceremony: “Now, Tom, girls need clothes and food and tender happiness and frills, a pan, a comb, perhaps a cat. All caprice if you will, but still they need them.” And Ms. Holmes could be told: “Hear well, sweet Katie, for promise binds. Young men are free and may forget. Remind him then that you may have necessities and follies, too.” Unlike other components of Scientology, which are often cloaked in mystery and controversy, the words spoken at weddings tend to be easy to grasp. In some ways ceremonies performed by Scientology ministers resemble those of mainstream religions. Brides dressed in white are escorted down the aisle by their fathers, said the Rev. John Carmichael, the president of the Church of Scientology of New York and the spokesman for 12 churches in New York and New Jersey. They may be attended by bridesmaids and flower girls. Music is a matter of individual choice, there is invariably a celebration of some kind, and many of the promises are familiar: to love, honor and be faithful through life’s vicissitudes. “Our view of marriage and the family is a traditional view, so the wedding ceremony is traditional,” Mr. Carmichael said. But there are also fundamental distinctions that set the rites apart. For example, in the traditional Scientology ceremony, when the bridegroom promises to “keep her, well or ill,” he is also asked, “And when she’s older, do you then keep her still?” The wording places more emphasis than the rites of many other religions on the likelihood that the future may be fraught with difficulty. The Scientology minister tells the bride, “Know that life is stark and often somewhat grim, and tiredness and fret and pain and sickness do beget a state of mind where spring romance is far away and dead.” She is then asked if she is willing to “create still his health, his purpose and repose.” Similarly the bridegroom is told, “The tides of fortune and of life are sometimes fair or grim.” He should not leave his wife in search of solutions, and the minister says, “Take thy own even though they sleep beneath foul straw and eat thin bread and walk on pavement less than kind.” Why are such gloomy prospects mixed with the joy of weddings? “We do this strictly in the context of being able to do something about it,” Mr. Carmichael said. “Scientology has workable solutions to life’s problems. It is designed with tools people can use to help themselves and others.” In the beliefs of Scientology, a fundamental tenet of marriage is contained in the symbol of the ARC triangle. Its three points stand for affinity, reality and communication, and couples are told they must be vigilant about preserving all three. The Rev. Gaetane Asselin, the international community affairs director of the Church of Scientology International, said, “We ask them to make a promise to heal any upset before going to sleep.” She added, “As long as you maintain the triangle in full, you will understand each other.” Though Scientology is described by some of its critics as a cult, it does not require that nonbelieving partners convert, nor does it prohibit customs from other faiths in its weddings. In the view of J. Gordon Melton, the founder of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, Calif., Scientology is trying in this way to mollify families who might prefer their children to wed in more mainstream institutions. “If the parents are not Scientologists, you have to deal with how to structure them into the ceremony and make them feel at home,” he said. The same inclusive spirit may be evident this weekend, when, according to news media speculation, some Roman Catholic blessings are expected to be offered in deference to Katie Holmes’s family. --WatchTVEatDonutDrinkBeer 18:17, 14 November 2006 (UTC) Grief Vultures Scientologists Visit Campus After Shooting Critics: Scientologists' Va. trip a time to prey © Copyright 2007 NYDailyNews.com. All rights reserved. BY GEORGE RUSH AND JOANNA RUSH MOLLOY Wednesday, April 18th 2007, 4:00 AM The Church of Scientology has dispatched "ministers" to provide "grief counseling" for shell-shocked youth at Virginia Tech - but critics suspect the sect hopes to convert the vulnerable students. "It's shameless, how they milk human tragedy to promote their organization," charges Rick Ross, whose CultNews.net has long tracked the group, which counts Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Kirstie Alley among its members. "These young people VT are experiencing trauma. What they need are qualified mental health professionals." HollywoodInterrupted.com's Mark Ebner brands the Scientologists as "vultures" who are "hindering legitimate, heroic rescue efforts with their spurious 'therapies,'" such as a "touch assist" - a light massage, which, Ebner says, is "supposed to distract them from their tragedy. It's a form of mini-hypnosis." "They did this at Ground Zero 9/11," says Ross. "They did this in New Orleans Hurricane Katrina. They look for very high-profile disaster that can be milked for photo ops" to promote the Church. Church official Sylvia Stannard tells us that about 20 "ministers" are in Blacksburg, Va. "We're doing a lot of emotional counseling, which is kind of our speciality," says Stannard. "We prohibit our people from proselytizing," but she adds, "they are going to tell them they are Scientologists" and "they will answer questions." The church, which preaches against all psychiatric pharmaceuticals, has already seized upon early reports that Cho Seung-Hui, the gunman accused of Monday's bloodbath, may have been taking antidepressents. Stannard says the killings demonstrate "these mind-altering drugs" make "you numb to other people's suffering. You really have to be drugged up to coldly kill people like that." Even before Cho's name was released, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a group founded by the church, said in a press release that "media and law enforcement must move quickly to investigate the Virginia shooter's psychiatric drug history - a common factor amongst school shooters." Ebner argues that the commission "claimed psychiatric drugs caused the Columbine High School shooting. But it came out later that the shooters went wild because they were off their meds."